Amway Center has amenities, but will it be loud for Orlando Magic games?

October 26, 2010|By Josh Robbins, Orlando Sentinel

City officials and Orlando Magic employees have spent weeks making sure that Amway Center will be ready for its first NBA regular-season game this Thursday.

But even after countless dry runs and four preseason exhibitions, no one can definitively answer a fundamental question: Just how loud will the new arena be when the Magic play a game that counts?

The home preseason schedule offered few clues. The Magic won their exhibitions at Amway Center by an average of 33 points. While some moments elicited loud cheers, the games lacked drama and, therefore, didn't produce sustained noise. Most courtside seats emptied by the middle of the fourth quarters.

"I don't think we've observed a true game situation yet in terms of the noise level the building could produce," Magic President Alex Martins said.

The $480 million new building features so many amenities — including a full-service restaurant called Jernigan's, touchscreen TV sets for loge-level patrons and a kids' zone named after the team mascot — that fans will be tempted to divert their attention away from the court.

Even Dennis Salvagio, the diehard Magic fan known as "The Fat Guy," experienced one of those moments during the preseason home opener on Oct. 10. At halftime, Salvagio left his seat in Section D of the club level to go to a restaurant. He found a friend there and before Salvagio knew it, he had missed half of the third quarter.

In addition, the seating plan concerns Salvagio. At old Amway Arena, the lower and upper seating bowls simply featured row after row after row of seats. There were no loge boxes or club-level seats to break up the crowd. Suites ringed only the very top of the arena.

Amway Center, despite all of its comforts, is different.

"Now, the new arena, with its mezzanine, with its skyboxes, breaks up the crowd," Salvagio said. "And although I think the crowd remains the best crowd in the NBA, I don't think the building is susceptible to echoing the noise as well as the old arena did."

Martins would disagree with that statement.

He said architects paid extra care to the building's acoustics. The lower bowl's exposed concrete has been treated with special tiles. Special banners hang from the rafters to accentuate the sound.

James Taylor marveled about the building's acoustics when he sang at a charity concert at Amway Center earlier this month.

Yet all of the acoustic touches in the world won't make much of a difference if the crowd doesn't focus on the game.

Magic President of Basketball Operations Otis Smith hopes that fans already have found reliable driving routes to the arena and explored the new building during the preseason. Smith wants fans to be in their seats just before tipoff of regular-season games.

Magic players expect no problems in the building, which holds 18,846 people for basketball.

The Magic sold-out their last 76 regular-season and postseason home games. The team also has sold more than 14,000 season tickets, a franchise record.

"Just being around town you can feel the energy," forward Rashard Lewis said. "A lot of the fans stop you and tell you, 'Good luck.' They love the arena. The fans are just as excited as we are.

"I can see it in their eyes."

In less than 48 hours, Lewis will learn if his ears will ring, too.

Read Josh Robbins' blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/magicblog and e-mail him at jrobbins@orlandosentinel.com. Subscribe to our Orlando Magic newsletter at OrlandoSentinel.com/joinus.